1. Field of the Invention
Apparatuses and methods consistent with the present invention relate to services to display content. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and a method for more efficiently supplying content and remotely controlling and monitoring multiple display apparatuses by allowing a server and the multiple display apparatuses interconnected by a network to perform predetermined message communication.
2. Description of the Related Art
FIG. 1 schematically illustrates a conventional system for supplying a content display service.
The conventional system 100 comprises display apparatuses 110, 130 and 150 and servers 120, 140 and 160 respectively connected to each of the display apparatuses to thereby supply content to the display apparatuses. The content comprises multimedia data (e.g., music, images, moving pictures) as well as other data in various text formats.
The respective servers 120, 140 and 160 have a variety of software programs installed therein and/or independent hardware mounted thereon, to thereby convert the content stored in the servers into a format suitable for output. The format of the content selected by a server manager is converted by a software program or hardware, and the content is output by the display apparatus.
A display apparatus may comprise a function to receive and output content selected by a user and then transmitted from the server. In this case, the display apparatus functions as a client. A method of providing such a service for displaying content between a client and a server is illustrated in FIG. 2.
While a server is in operation, a client connects to the server using the address and port information of the server S210, and requests a service from the server S220. Then, the server searches for the requested service, and supplies the service to the client S230.
According to the conventional system, as illustrated in FIG. 1, each of the display apparatuses needs a separate server having a function to convert a format of the content adaptively for its own. Therefore, a server manager has to select any content to be outputted directly from the display apparatus, causing inconvenience to him/her. In the client-server configuration illustrated in FIG. 2, it is difficult for the server to control a client display apparatus and to watch for changes in the physical states of the display apparatus. A server may be allowed to control the display apparatus by means of a home network standard such as universal plug-and-play (UPnP). In this case, the UPnP environment can be embodied using the HyperText Markup Language (HTML), and thus, a server and a display apparatus require an HTML browser and a parser to interpret the concerned message set. In addition, to perform the UPnP protocol, hardware or software equivalent in performance to an HTTP server is required. In this case, however, the hardware and software are effective only when the remote control commands are defined in UPnP, and many restrictions are imposed on both the extension of remote control commands and the monitoring of the display apparatus. Even when executing a simple remote control command, an HTTP server to perform the UPnP protocol and an HTML parser are required.
Under the circumstances, to solve difficulties in the conventional art, a message communication method is required for efficiently supplying content to a display apparatus and remotely controlling and monitoring the display apparatus.